


Showdown in Avengers Tower!

by platonic_boner



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A little bit of violence, Crack, Fluff, M/M, Pokemon GO - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7841788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platonic_boner/pseuds/platonic_boner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avengers Tower is a Pokemon gym, and Steve and Bucky are going to win it no matter what it takes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Showdown in Avengers Tower!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [ironic_boner ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ironic_boner) for editing and [runningwithswords](http://runningwithswords.tumblr.com) for Pokemon advice.

“I’m not _in a car_!” Bucky yells at his phone. “I am _jogging_! How am I going too fast?”

“Buck. Just calm down and catch the Charizard."

“Yeah, yeah, I got him.” Steve thinks Bucky’s sniper skills are helping him out, as he hasn’t missed a Pokemon yet. “But my ten kilometre egg isn’t gonna hatch unless we slow down a little.” 

“Sure it’s not just that you can’t keep up with me?” Seve jokes.

Bucky shoves him. It’s with his left hand, so Steve goes stumbling. He bumps into a middle-aged man who takes half a glance at him, sees the phone in his hand, and stalks away grumbling about jobless millennials and their video games.

Bucky glares after him.

“Man, youth these days,” Steve says. “Nobody respects their elders.”

Bucky snorts.

“C’mon, there’s a Pokestop over there,” Steve says. He throws his non-Pokemon arm around Bucky and leads the way. 

*

“I’m naming this one Sam,” Steve decides, keying in the name of his new Fearow.

“I’m naming mine Steve,” Bucky says.

This is about the hundredth Pokemon that Bucky has named Steve.

“We agreed we were naming them after people they remind us of,” Steve objects. 

This is about the ninetieth time that Steve has objected.

“Steve does remind me of you,” Bucky says. “Look at his little talons. They’re doing the same grabby thing you did last night when you wanted the chips.”

*

They go into an art museum together. A reporter accosts them, pen poised above her notebook.

“Mr Rogers, do you still consider yourself an artist? What made you come here today? Do you have any comment on the rumours that you and Mr Barnes are in a relationship? Is this a date?”

“We just followed a Snorlax in here,” Bucky says, cutting her off.

“The art is lovely, though!” Steve adds quickly, so as not to appear rude towards the artists or inconsiderate of the museum.

He needn’t have bothered. The reporter has already shoved her notebook away and yanked her phone from her pocket.

“ _Where?_ ” she demands.

(Bucky names his Snorlax Steve because “He’s big and adorable, just like you!”)

*

Steve and Bucky hadn’t started out intending to catch them all. They’d had modest goals: have fun, collect some cute Pokemon, and win the Avengers Tower gym for Team Valor.

When the gym turned blue before they got to level five, it was war.

After hunting Pokemon for six hours, they stop for lunch at a cafe with a nearby Pokestop. Between spins, they compare Pokemon.

“I’ve got a Flareon with 1000 cp,” Steve says. “That’s my best one.”

“My Jolteon has 1100 cp,” Bucky says. “He’s named after you because his mane reminds me of your star.”

“...You realize we know the god of thunder, right?” Steve says.

“Whatever,” says Bucky. “Anyways, we can definitely beat Tony now.”

“I think you’re right,” Steve says. “Back to the tower then?”

“Yeah, but first I’m getting some more of these brownies to go,” Bucky says.

*

They can’t take the tower.

In the time they’ve been gone, the gym’s prestige has gone up significantly. It’s no longer guarded by one 800 cp Pokemon. Now five Pokemon of over 2000 cp are defending the gym. Suspiciously, they all belong to gym leaders with names of “TonytheAwesome,” “TonyJunior,” “TonytheThird,” and so on. 

“He’s cheating,” Bucky seethes. “We’ve been running _all morning_ catching Pokemon, and he’s _cheating_.”

Steve doesn’t have a chance to reply, because Bucky is already charging towards the elevator. Steve follows and slips inside just as Bucky smashes the button for Tony’s workshop.

Steve’s not sure what he’d say anyways. On one hand, rationally, it’s just a video game. On the other, he’s pretty sure he and Bucky ran at least three marathons this morning, and Tony’s lack of sportsmanship is quite galling.

Bucky storms into the workshop. “Anthony Edward Stark!”

Tony pops out from behind a half-built suit. “Yes?”

“You’re _cheating_ ,” Bucky says.

“Me? Cheat? Never,” Tony says. “At what?”

“Pokemon Go!” Bucky says.

“Nope, not cheating. Maybe I’m just better than you,” Tony suggests.

“Sir,” Jarvis interjects, “Your Pokebot has just caught a Dragonite with 1154 cp for your SixthTony account. Shall I power it up and set it to defend the Tower gym?”

“Ha!” Bucky yells.

“Yes, sure, Jarvis,” Tony says, then turns to Bucky. 

“This isn’t cheating,” he says. He points at both of them. “You two have been running around at superhuman speeds all day using your powers to catch Pokemon. I’m just using mine.”

Bucky lunges for Tony.

Steve catches him and holds him back, because Tony is a lot smaller and squishier than Bucky even if he is annoying. He drags Bucky to the elevator. Bucky doesn’t resist as strongly as he could, but he calls over Steve’s shoulder, “This isn’t over! We’ll beat you!”

Bucky stays draped over Steve in the elevator, forcing Steve to hold him up.

“Ahh,” Bucky says. “Real kind of you to let me rest my feet.”

*

Bucky reaches out to his Twitter followers to help them find the Pokebot. Bucky has a large Twitter following because he posts pictures of the Avengers. He’s the only one sneaky enough to take pictures of Natasha and Clint. Also, his pictures of Steve sleeping are weirdly popular. 

They follow the trail of Twitter sightings and find the Pokebot, which is basically a self-driving toy car with a Starkpad on top. It tries to scoot away from them, going surprisingly fast for such a small device.

As they’re sprinting after it, Bucky suddenly curses and slows down.

Steve immediately slows as well. “Buck? You all right?”

“Yeah, I was just going too fast for my eggs again.”

“ _This is not the time to be hatching eggs_ ,” Steve yells.

Bucky pouts but speeds up. Steve runs along with him, and they catch up to the Pokebot and corner it. It whirs its wheels in distress.

Bucky crushes it with his metal hand, grinning smugly.

“Let’s see Stark beat us _now_ ,” Bucky says.

*

Tony is all glowers at their weekly pizza dinner that night, and soon disappears back to his workshop. Bucky shrugs and posts Tony’s grumpy face on Twitter as a thank you to his followers.

*

The morning finds Tony chugging coffee but smirking between his yawns. Bucky and Steve immediately go for their phones.

The Tower is not only still blue, but more strongly defended than ever.

“You built another robot?” Bucky demands.

“I built _three_ more,” Tony says. “And your Twitter followers won’t be able to help you this time. This is an upgraded version.”

“We’ll see about that,” Bucky says.

*

Bucky puts a Twitter bounty on Tony’s new Pokebots, but they seem to be making themselves invisible, as hours pass without any sightings. Finally, Bucky and Steve go out themselves, searching for the “upgraded” Pokebots. It’s a couple hours before they find anything. Then, in a park, Bucky says, “There’s something on that dog, look.”

Steve squints at the golden retriever Bucky pointed to, then moves purposefully towards him.

“May I?” he asks the dog’s human, who agrees.

Steve squats down to pet the dog. Clinging to his fur, he finds a tiny robot that looks very much like something Tony would make. As Steve pats the dog’s belly, the little robot detaches itself and scurries on its insect-like legs around the path to another dog that it latches onto.

Steve can’t exactly go tackle this other dog. Well, he _could_ , and he considers it for a moment, but he’d end up in the newspaper tomorrow, and he doesn’t want that. So he mournfully watches Tony’s robot get away, gives the golden retriever another few pats, and then rejoins Bucky.

*

Bucky is eventually convinced that they can’t go around inspecting people’s dogs for robots.

“I’m not giving up, though,” he says. “I’m not letting Stark win.”

“Nobody said anything about giving up,” Steve says. “We’ll do this the hard way. Let’s go put our running shoes on, and see if we can recruit some allies.”

*

Clint refuses to install Pokemon Go on his phone because of the GPS. 

“You know what I do for a living, right?” he says. “You think it’s a good idea to let people _track_ me?”

Bruce already has Pokemon Go, but won’t help either, as he’s sworn off the game.

“Sorry guys,” he says. “I just found those darn zubats way too frustrating, and I can’t let that happen again.”

Natasha seems much more interested than the other two, and pries for details into how exactly Tony’s beating them and how his robots work. When Steve asks, “So you’ll help?” though, she laughs and says no.

“I have… better things to do with my time,” she says, doing something on her phone.

Steve swears he hears the Pokemon music start as they leave her room. But then again, he’s been hearing it so much lately he wouldn’t be surprised if he was hallucinating it.

*

So Steve and Bucky go out Pokemon hunting by themselves again. They’re feeling very defeated after a few hours. The only good thing is that it’s dark and there are fewer dogs out, so Tony’s productivity is probably down.

“We should get a better strategy,” Steve says. “Start using lures more.”

“There’s a Pokestop over there,” Bucky says, and heads into a dark and shadowy alley. He sets a lure on it as soon as they’re in range.

Unfortunately, they quickly find out that lures aren’t only a beacon to Pokemon. One moment Steve is catching a Pidgeotto. The next there’s a knife at his throat and someone saying, “Give me all your money,” and Bucky laughing and then their muggers are lying on the ground in front of them and groaning.

“You all right?” Bucky asks, even as he reaches out to Steve and checks for himself that Steve’s unharmed.

“I’m fine,” Steve says, and Bucky’s attention turns to the muggers.

“One of you give me your phone,” Bucky orders.

“Are you reverse-mugging us?” one mugger demands.

“What? No, I’m calling the police on you,” Bucky says.

“But you’ve got a phone already.”

It’s true; Bucky’s phone is still in his right hand and undamaged despite his brief tussle with the muggers.

“Yeah, but I’m catching Pokemon with this phone,” Bucky says. “So I need one of yours.”

It occurs to Steve that this Pokemon thing might have gone a little too far.

*

It’s late when they finally leave the police station and even later when they make their way home. They’ve both got some blood on them from injuries they didn’t even notice getting during the mugging. Steve’s discovered that he can, actually, get blisters. They’re exhausted and defeated and they don’t even try to take Tony’s gym when they get back to the Tower.

They limp to the Avengers’ common room. It’s nearly deserted - just Natasha in a corner, knitting with bright yellow yarn. They’re almost too tired to greet her as they flop onto the couch. (Okay, Bucky flops onto the couch. Steve flops mostly onto Bucky.) 

“I’m so hungry, but I’m too tired to move,” Bucky whines.

Steve would get up (Bucky _did_ sort of save him from muggers, after all) but someone else beats him to it.

“Want me to get you something? I have pie… _humble_ pie!” Tony crows from the doorway.

Bucky yanks the pillow out from under Steve’s head and whips it at Tony. It hits him square in the face, but doesn’t appear to dampen his spirits at all. (Steve grumbles and shifts to use Bucky as his pillow instead.)

“Wanna see all the great Pokemon I got today?” Tony asks.

Obviously, no one does, but Tony leans over the back of the couch to put his phone in their faces anyways.

He opens the Pokemon app and they all stare.

The tower is no longer mystic blue.

Nor is it valor red.

It’s blinding, sunny yellow.

The room is silent, except for the clacking of Natasha’s needles.

All three of them slowly turn to look at her.

Natasha smiles, takes the yellow mass in her lap, and wraps it around her neck. “Like my new scarf?”

**Author's Note:**

> PSA to be careful playing Pokemon Go, including not going into unfamiliar dark alleys. Be safe, fellow trainers!!


End file.
